First of all: lilo talked to me, and we friendly discussed the issue, and exchanged opinions about the event.

And, yes, I think my text had too much repercussion and I was thinking about removing the post from my blog. But I don’t like the idea of removing stuff that I already made online. I think it wouldn’t be fair with people that read this and wanted to argue with me. I would feel like a coward if I removed a text I’ve already written and published.

But just to conclude:

I agree that the guy deserved the ban

I am not against punishing people for “anti-social” behaviour on a IRC network

I am not the kind of people that thinks IRC should have “total free speech”, and people allowed to say anything they want in a channel

The only reason for my post were:

Yes, I think that the person in question wouldn’t be punished if he had offended any other non-staffer people

Yes, I think that the punishment was too much because: a total network ban wasn’t necessary IMHO; and it wouldn’t happen if the problem happened with other people (you can say “yes, that it would happen”, but I don’t believe so)

Finally the main reason for the post was: I was really disappointed with the network staffer saying many times that “this is not open to discussion”. This was even why I have posted my complaints publicly instead of discussing it with the network staffers: if he really didn’t want to discuss, I had the desire to make my complaints public.

Probably the reason I think the punishment was “too much” is related to the lack of portuguese-speaking staffers in the network. This may be one of the reasons I think that an offense wouldn’t have the same consequences if a staffer wasn’t involved: there aren’t enough portuguese-speaking staffers to guarantee this.

Okay, I will not say any word about it, anymore. It is over and I still think the freenode services are good.